Langston Hughes’s 1922 poem “Mother to Son” was written for the civil rights magazine The Crisis and later published in Hughes’s first book, The Weary Blues (1926). The poem’s speaker, a mother, addresses her son in a lecture about perseverance and hope. The mother describes her difficult life and the painful obstacles she has faced, turning her struggles into a lesson of inspiration and encouragement for her son. Utilizing the metaphor of a staircase, the poem touches on themes such as racial inequality, poverty, and trauma. Hughes was a prominent influence in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote extensively on racial oppression against Black Americans. The speaker represents the Black American mother, resilient and strong yet often underestimated and overlooked, as she raises the next generation of Black men in an oppressive society that will marginalize and traumatize them. As a mother does for her child, she insists that with ruthless determination and tireless work, there is still hope.

Poet Biography

Born in Joplin, Missouri in February 1901, James Mercer Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern towns and began writing prolifically at a young age. Both of Hughes’s paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved, and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners, creating a fraught relationship with his ancestry and his racial identity. Because he was estranged from his father, and because his mother spent much of his childhood traveling in search of work, Hughes was raised primarily in Lawrence, Kansas by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston. His grandmother instilled racial pride in her grandson by exposing him to the Black American oral tradition and the importance of racial justice through activism. His relationship with his grandmother inspired his lifelong devotion to fighting against anti-Black racism and representing the Black community throughout his work. After Hughes moved to New York City to study briefly at Columbia University, the racist environment forcefully drove him out of the school.

During this time, Hughes began to make a name for himself among various publishers and magazines and became an important figure within the creative community in the Black neighborhood of Harlem. Eventually graduating from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically Black university, Hughes returned to Harlem in New York City and went on to write numerous plays, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Hughes and his contemporaries aimed to shift the cultural narrative about Black Americans, combating racial stereotypes (like the “minstrel”) and not shying away from the darker, more realistic themes of the Black American existence in the post-war era. Known for his social activism and innovative style, Hughes pioneered the literary art form known as jazz poetry. His poetry and fiction portray the hardship, joy, music, and community that defines African American literature as it is known today.

Poem Text

Hughes, Langston. “Mother to Son.” 1922. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens with the speaker preparing to tell her son something important. Opening immediately with the metaphor that will extend the entire poem, she says that life is a staircase—and her life has not been fancy or elegant like a crystal staircase. Her staircase has been filled with painful obstacles like metaphorical tacks sticking out of the floor and rough wood that gives splinters. The boards comprising her staircase have been torn up, making it difficult and dangerous to ascend. In some places, carpet is missing. The floor is bare. Still, she’s always been climbing and continues. Now and then she comes upon something sturdy or safe like a landing or turning points—but other times she must go blindly forward, through darkness. She tells her son to never go back or stand still. She tells him not to fall, not to give up or lose hope because if she has kept going all this time, he can too. She, just like her son, is still climbing, and the climb has not been easy.